Presidential Contest Research Articles

Issues in Presidential Election Forecasting: Election Margins, Incumbency, and Model Credibility

Three issues of presidential election forecasting research are raised. The first concerns the consequences for forecasting models of presidential elections becoming more narrowly decided. A realigned and polarized party system has led to smaller election margins in presidential contests since 1984. This development complicates model estimation and may also have blurred differences between strong and weak forecasting models. The second issue concerns the presidential incumbency advantage. Forecasting research has shed greater light on this important electoral factor. The advantage of presidential incumbency appears to be largely restricted to first party-term incumbents. This exposes what might be seen as a blind spot to electoral accountability. Finally, the issue of forecast model credibility is raised. Several criteria beyond forecast accuracy should be taken into account in assessing whether a forecast model and its prediction are credible.

The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy by Jeffrey L. Pasley (review)

Reviewed by: The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy by Jeffrey L. Pasley Jeffrey L. Malanson (bio) The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy. By Jeffrey L. Pasley. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013. Pp. 504. $37.50 cloth) In their efforts to define the elements of formal party systems, social scientists have concluded that the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties were not true political parties. In The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy, Jeffrey L. Pasley argues that this focus on the institutionalized party has distracted historians from the very real partisan developments that took place in the 1790s. “The real importance of parties in the time of the Founders,” Pasley asserts, “is as rather loose but intense communities of political ideology, emotion, and action that took form among politicians, political writers, and their audiences” (p. 6). Throughout The First Presidential Contest, Pasley persuasively demonstrates the variety of ways that the 1790s was a time of real and sustained partisan development. Especially important in conceptualizing the partisanship of the 1796 campaign is Pasley’s call for the reader to “think of political campaigns…as stories: competing public narratives that seek to explain the world to voters in a way that compels a particular choice” (p. 225). From this vantage point it is clear that the partisanship of 1796 might not have been as fully developed as it would eventually become, but it was tangibly there in ways that recent generations of historians have been too quick to overlook. While generally working within the standard narrative of early party development, Pasley carefully presents the emergence of the Democratic-Republican Party as the expression of a liberal opposition mentality sharply contrasted with the more conservative beliefs of the Washington administration and its supporters. Questions of who should rule and what role the public should play in governing—the differences between aristocracy and democracy in the American context—were central in the developing political culture of the period. The great strength of The First Presidential Contest is that in exploring [End Page 287] these issues Pasley aims to offer a “practically minded ‘history from the middle out’ that means to show how politics actually works, how high and low (or ‘grass roots’) politics are connected” (p. 14). This means that, although Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison feature prominently in the book, it is not the founding fathers who drive Pasley’s narrative. In the political culture of the late eighteenth century, the candidates themselves largely refrained from playing an active role in their campaigns, leaving lesser officials and operatives to do much of the work enunciating party ideologies and advancing party candidates. Central actors in Pasley’s story include newspaper editors, pamphlet writers, lower-level party operatives, and individual presidential electors in states with popular voting for electors. The actions of all of these figures—especially Benjamin Franklin Bache, the editor of the Philadelphia General Advertiser/Aurora, and other members of the partisan press—contributed to a vibrant and contentious national politics that resonated in cities and towns across the country and had an impact on their elections. The First Presidential Contest presents a compelling and forward-moving narrative that reflects voluminous research in the print and political cultures of the 1790s. While generally outstanding, I would offer two small critiques. First, Pasley devotes roughly sixty pages to a very thorough consideration of anti-Jefferson essays written by William Loughton Smith in 1792 and 1796, and to Republican responses to A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America by John Adams. There is a lot of fascinating information contained in these pages, but at times it can pull the reader away from the bigger picture. I also quibble with Pasley’s overly partisan reading of what he calls “Washington’s Hamilton-written Farewell Address” (p. 265). On both the authorship of the address and the degree to which Washington intended it as a partisan document, Pasley overstates the case. These are relatively minor complaints about what is otherwise an excellent and extremely valuable study that should change the way historians understand partisan development in...

Deception in Third Party Advertising in the 2012 Presidential Campaign

In this article, we profile the advertising activities and deception levels of the top 2012 spending independent expenditure groups that focused on the presidential contest. From December 1, 2011, through Election Day, November 6, 2012, independent expenditure groups spent more than $360 million on presidential television advertising, according to Kantar Media CMAG. More than a fifth of the dollars spent by the top groups purchased ads containing at least one claim judged as misleading by independent fact checkers. The proportion of dollars that these groups spent on ads containing at least one deception was much greater during the primaries than afterward. During the primaries, the pro-Romney super PAC “Restore Our Future” led the pack both in dollars spent on ads containing at least one deception and in the proportion of its ads found deceptive by the fact checkers. During the general election, in the post-primary period, the pro-Obama super PAC “Priorities USA Action” devoted the most dollars and greatest proportion of its total dollars to ads in which fact checkers found at least one deceptive claim. During some but not all of the 2012 election year, the percentage of third party ads containing at least one deceptive claim was higher among those groups not required to disclose their donors than it was among those required to do so.

Creatures of Politics: Media, Message, and the American Presidency. By MichaelLempert and MichaelSilverstein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. 263 pp.

Creatures of Politics: Media, Message, and American Presidency. By Michael Lempert and Michael Silverstein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. 263 pp. In Creatures of Politics, linguistic anthropologists Michael Lempert and Michael Silverstein seek to examine how American presidential candidates convey message. The authors do not mean actual substance of campaign talk, nor on which a candidate runs, but often choreographed symbolism that suggests a candidate's moral character. A message, then, is a kind of personal brand or biographical aura (p. 100) that one associates with candidates, depending on constellation of signs that surround and emanate from them. These signs include not only candidates' words but also how candidates (mis)pronounce those words, pause among them, and manage (or fail to manage) gestures, clothing, and facial expressions. In addition, each candidate's message is structured by other political actors--spokespersons, agents from opposing campaigns, pundits, and reporters--all of whom seek to use a host of semiotic resources in order to craft candidate's characterological essence. In their wide-ranging analysis of message, Lempert and Silverstein examine speeches, debates, ads, interviews, and news narratives. The result is an often-fascinating study of contemporary electoral and journalism. First, in Chapter 2, authors discuss institutional necessity of messaging in political campaigns. Analyzing 2008 presidential contest, they show that even candidates who wish to rise above politics as usual (p. 42) inevitably brand themselves and their opponents in melodramatic terms. Chapter 3 investigates how a candidate's brand is related to whether and how that candidate appears to be addressing the issues (p. 105). In a revealing study of 2008 Democratic primaries, authors examine how politicians and journalists alike comanufactured Hillary Clinton's brand, creating impression that she had equivocated on an issue and implicating her as an inconsistent candidate. In Chapter 4, authors tackle what they term ethno-blooperology (p. 122), way innocent and not-so-innocent gaffes come to be seen as revelatory of a candidate's true character. They show, for instance, how Howard Dean's infamous 2003 scream was interpreted by commentators as evidence of his interior instability--and unelectability. Chapter 5 focuses on semiotic processes by which a candidate is identified as a flip-flopper (p. 145). Examining case of John Kerry in 2004, authors illustrate that both flip-flopping and resoluteness are constructed across a series of communicative events, as journalists highlight apparent inconsistencies in candidates' speeches and as candidates attempt to answer their critics by signaling conviction in their subsequent public performances. Then, in Chapter 6, authors consider relationship between message and body language. In a meticulous study of Barack Obama's hand gestures, they argue that body language indirectly contributes to a candidate's brand, especially as nonverbal signs are seized upon by pundits as proof of character type. …

Don't Count Your Chickens before They're Hatched: The 2013 Italian Parliamentary and Presidential Elections

The 2013 parliamentary and presidential contests were both outstanding elections, even by Italian standards. In the former case, this was because of very high volatility and the breakthrough of the 5-Star Movement (M5S), which resulted in a hung parliament and a stalemate in the formation of a new government. In the latter, for the first time in Italian history, the incumbent President of the Republic was re-elected for a second seven-year term of office. The result of these two events was Italy's first grand coalition government, led by Enrico Letta and supported by President Napolitano. While the significance of these elections is better assessed in combination with new government's capacity to achieve economic growth and restore confidence in Italian politics, the Italian party system still remains in a state of flux.

Mitt Romney’s Racist Appeals

This article identifies a marked difference in the type of race-based appeals that dominated Barack Obama’s presidential reelection contest in 2012 from his inaugural campaign in 2008. Racist appeals by Mitt Romney and the right in 2012 supplanted the racial appeals by Obama and the left in 2008. We focus our attention on a particularly salient form of racist appeal, one based on the long-standing stereotypes of black laziness and taking advantage. Specifically, we outline the historical underpinnings of these stereotypes. We then demonstrate how Romney and the right wove these underlying stereotypes into a seamless racist narrative—through political advertisements, online messaging, political speeches and debate statements—beginning with the Republican primary and continuing through the general election.

The first presidential contest: 1796 and the founding of American democracy

This is the first study in half a century to focus on the election of 1796. The first contested presidential election offered neither a structured campaign--the candidates did not even deign to participate--nor an analysable national vote. Not only were political parties not yet institutionalised, they were ignored by the Constitution and frowned upon by the Founders. Pasley contends, however, that 1796 set the stage for all of American politics to follow. Challenging much of the conventional understanding of this election, Pasley argues that Federalist and Democratic-Republican were deeply meaningful categories for politicians and citizens of the 1790s, even if the names could be inconsistent and the institutional presence lacking. He treats the 1796 election as a rough draft of the democratic presidential campaigns that came later rather than as the personal squabble depicted by other historians. It set the geographic pattern of New England competing with the South at the two extremes of American politics, and it established the basic ideological dynamic of a liberal, rights-spreading American left arrayed against a conservative, society-protecting right, each with its own competing model of leadership. Rather than the inner thoughts and personal lives of the Founders, covered in so many other volumes, Pasley focuses on images of Adams and Jefferson created by supporters--and detractors--through the press, capturing the way that ordinary citizens in 1796 would have actually experienced candidates they never heard speak. Newspaper editors, minor officials, now forgotten congressman, and individual elector candidates all take a leading role in the story to show how politics of the day actually worked. Pasley's cogent study rescues the election of 1796 from the shadow of 1800 and invites us to rethink how we view that campaign and the origins of American politics.

Institutional Lessons from the 2000 Presidential Election

This essay discusses two issues raised by the 2000 presidential election that are relevant to institutional design and institutional choice and that have applicability beyond the presidential contest. First, the election aftermath illustrates the importance of adopting frameworks to shape decisionmaking before an actual controversy arises. If rules and procedures are determined before it is clear which interests are benefited from particular procedures and which are harmed, it is more likely that rules will be chosen that serve public-regarding objectives rather than self-interested goals of participants. This analysis suggests that Congress was the institution best suited to resolve any lingering disputes from Florida because the Electoral Count Act, which had been adopted over one hundred years before, would have structured deliberation to reduce opportunistic behavior and to ensure that decisions were made transparently. Second, the interplay between the United States Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court is a fascinating case study of institutional dynamics, with the federal court decisively outmaneuvering the state supreme court to advance the outcome preferred by a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court justices. In particular, the first unanimous per curiam decision in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board contained hints about the effect of Article II on judicial interpretation that discouraged the state supreme court from specifying substandards for any manual recounts. In the end, the real tragedy of the institutional interplay was not that the Florida supreme court was reversed but that Congress, the institution most suited to make any final determination, was prevented from playing that role. The Court's analysis and actions reinforced the unfortunate tendency of the political branches to rely on the unelected federal judiciary to set in and save the country from the chaos of democracy.

A Cacophony of Dissonance

A Cacophony of Dissonance

Deus ex Machina

Using data from the 2008 presidential nomination contest, we offer systematic tests of the relationships between traditional campaign factors, the Internet and campaign performance. We find that claims of the Internet’s relevance to modern campaigns are warranted, as it is a unique facet of campaigns and significantly improves candidates’ financial and electoral support. The Internet is especially helpful to candidates in generating small-donor contributions and in maximizing contributions after early primary victories. Overall, these findings suggest that the Internet offers a viable mechanism for long-shot candidates to overcome the resource demands of the current presidential nomination system.

Kenya’s 2013 Elections: Technology Is Not Democracy

Abstract: The 2013 elections were Kenya’s fifth since the country returned to multiparty politics and the direct election of its president in 1992. Three of the preceding four elections were marked by violence. But in only one—the 2007 presidential contest—was the violence triggered by deep dissatisfaction with the electoral process and the electoral commission that administered the balloting. In an effort to avoid repeating the 2007 electoral debacle, Kenya’s election commission turned to technology, but its high-tech voter-registration and vote-count processes fell short. Its experience has important lessons both for emerging democracies and for international donors.

Preferences for Employment Protection and the Insider-Outsider Divide

Insider-outsider theory suggests that in dual labour markets two groups have opposing preferences regarding protection against dismissals: insiders defend employment protection, because it increases their rents. Outsiders see it as a mobility barrier and demand deregulation. Similar divides are expected for unemployment benefits: as insiders and outsiders have diverging unemployment risks, they should demand different levels of protection.Although these views are influential in the political economy debate, there is little empirical research on the effect of contract types on social and labour market policy preferences. We use a novel data set collected in the most recent presidential contest in France, which combines detailed information on respondents' employment status with questions measuring attitudes towards dismissal regulation and other labour market policies. Going beyond insider-outsider theory, we argue and show empirically that the effect of membership in either segment is moderated by the employment situation in workers' occupation.

France's Left Turn: Mapping the 2012 Elections

In 2012 the Socialist Party (PS) presidential candidate, Francois Hollande, defeated the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy. The victory was convincing, though not overwhelming. Hollande thus became only the second Socialist president of the Fifth Republic after Francois Mitterrand. Hollandes success in the presidential contest was reinforced a few weeks later when the PS and immediate allies won an absolute majority of seats in the parliamentary election. The articles in this special issue explore many of the key aspects of both 2012 campaigns: from understanding how Sarkozy could fall so rapidly from grace to examining the extent to which the outcome symbolises a new direction for France, both domestically and internationally.

Presidential Elections in Ireland: From Partisan Predictability to the End of Loyalty

This article assesses the seven presidential elections held in Ireland between 1945 and 2011 and argues that the best way of understanding these contests is to divide them into two separate categories: the four contests from 1945 to 1973 and the three contests from 1990 to 2011. The first category of presidential elections reflects the entirely stable and predictable pattern of party competition that represented politics in Ireland after Fianna Fáil first came to power in 1932. The second category reflects an entirely different type of politics in Ireland: one where presidential elections took place against a backdrop of a changing party system and an increasingly volatile electorate, where ties of party loyalty would loosen substantially over a 20-year period. The presidential contests of 1990, 1997 and 2011 all show evidence of increasing voter disconnect from the party system, and a shift away from the defining features of previous presidential elections. Predictable political stability has been replaced by a weakening of partisan voting as candidates come under more and more public scrutiny. By assessing the nomination processes, election campaigns and outcomes of Ireland's presidential elections, evidence is shown of striking change in the dynamic of the elections from 1990.

Vote Miscount or Poll Response Bias: What Causes Discrepancies between Exit Poll and Reported Vote Shares?

Is vote miscount detectable in the United States? United States' citizens lack any federal right to publicly access records necessary to judge the accuracy of electoral outcomes. Most U.S. states also lack such a right; and tally votes using trade secret software without conducting publicly verifiable manual post-election audits of election outcomes. In addition to this lack of public verifiability of United States' election results, there is a dearth of detailed election data reporting in the United States. Thus, a limited number of statistical methods are available for detecting patterns consistent with vote miscount. This paper develops a statistical method using maximum likelihood estimation to determine the approximate proportions of vote miscount and exit poll response bias consistent with precinct-level patterns of discrepancies between exit poll and election results. Simulated data shows the method works well. This statistical method can be used to detect possible vote miscount by anyone, such as exit pollsters, having access to both precinct-level exit poll and election results data. Applying this within precinct discrepancy analysis to the pattern of discrepancies in the 2004 Ohio U.S. Presidential election show a consistency with vote miscount sufficient to have altered the outcome of the 2004 presidential election contest.

Forecasting the 2012 Presidential Election with State-Level Economic Indicators

Nearly all forecast models of US presidential elections provide estimates of the national two-party vote (Campbell 2008). Each of the nine forecasts published in the 2008 forecasting issue of PS: Political Science and Politics made national popular vote total predictions for the major party candidates, while only one provided an expected result in the Electoral College (Klarner 2008). These national vote models are assumed to be reliable forecasts of who is likely to win the general election. In most cases, this assumption is reasonable. It becomes problematic, however, at precisely the point that forecasts are most interesting: when elections are close. In tight elections, national forecasts can and have produced a “winner” different from the actual winner. Consider the forecasts and ultimate outcome of the 2000 election. Each of the 2000 presidential election forecasts predicted vice president Al Gore to win a majority of the two-party popular vote, which he did, but none correctly predicted governor George W. Bush to assume the presidency (Campbell 2001). Never in US history have White House residents been determined through a national popular vote. Presidential elections are decided through contests in the states and the District of Columbia. The forecast model we developed explicitly models the presidential contest based on factors inherent to these 51 jurisdictions. This modeling approach allows us to make a projection of the Electoral College result, which popular vote estimates cannot.

Forecasting the 2012 American National Elections

This symposium presents 13 articles forecasting the 2012 US national elections. Included in this collection are the eight national and one state presidential vote forecasting models published in PS: Political Science & Politics during the 2008 elections along with three additional forecasts and one article offering a composite of the forecasts. Although the focus remains on the presidential contest, as in past years, several articles extend their scope to cover the congressional elections as well.

Domestic Antecedents of Afghan Policy

Realism tells us that states are unitary actors and foreign policy ends at the water’s edge. This essay questions this view in the context of recent US policy on Afghanistan. In early 2008, Senator Barack Obama won several early primary victories and gained a substantial lead in the Democratic presidential nomination contest. Both Democratic senator Hillary Clinton and to a lesser extent the apparent Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, questioned Obama’s leadership ability. The future president responded in part by announcing his intent to expand the US military presence in Afghanistan. The policy of increased militarization crystallized publically in response to domestic campaign pressure rather than because of events on the ground in South Asia.

To Change or Not to Change Horses: The World War II Elections

Folk wisdom counsels voters to stick with leaders in time of a war, though recent experience suggests otherwise. Taking advantage of largely unexplored polls from the 1940s (Gallup and National Opinion Research Center), this research probes vote choices in the World War II elections. Of particular interest is a counterfactual question that asked respondents how they would have voted if there was no war. In addition, the aggregate vote in presidential contests over time is used to estimate how the White House party fares in wartime elections. President Roosevelt received a special premium in electoral support from the wartime condition in both 1940 and 1944. This premium was earned through popular support for war‐related issues. Hence, in wartime elections where such support is lacking voters may be inclined to change horses.

Campaign Context and Preference Dynamics in U.S. Presidential Elections

Previous scholarship finds that campaigns “matter” in that these enterprises have the capacity to influence voter preferences. Insights about how campaigns exert effects on preferences are less abundant, however. In this paper, we elaborate a theory of campaign effects that proposes campaigns matter, at least in part, because they function as a filter to mediate the impact of events. By amplifying and reinforcing the impact of relevant events, campaigns help voters process campaign developments, permitting citizens to form, crystallize or update candidate preferences. In quadrennial presidential contests, active campaigns are generally limited to battleground states, setting up natural experiments that allow scholars to investigate the claim that competitiveness influences campaign dynamics by generating vigorous campaigns that intensify the impact of events. We examine this hypothesis by comparing the dynamics of voter preferences for U.S. president in battleground and non-battleground states in the fall 2008 campaign using statewide survey data. The results confirm our hypothesis by showing that events exerted both short- and longer-term effects in battleground states, while any impact on voter sentiment in non-battleground states was short-lived.